How Just for Men Went Direct-to-Consumer with Magento Commerce

The hair color giant needed a digital transformation.

Launched in 1987, Just For Men is the world’s most famous male hair color brand. Manufactured by Combe Incorporated of New York, Just For Men’s beard care, hair color, and hair regrowth products are trusted by men worldwide who want to look and feel their best. For decades, Just For Men products have sold exclusively in retail stores, but over time, the brand has built a growing audience online. To capitalize on this opportunity, the company needed a convenient way for consumers to buy their comb-in formula or gray-reducing shampoo online. Selling direct-to-consumer was a new endeavor for Just For Men. To meet their customers’ high expectations of the brand, they needed an enhanced checkout, easy payment systems, innovative eCommerce features, and accurate reporting.

Naturally, Just For Men was focused on increasing conversions and sales, but their main goal was to offer their highly-tailored shopping experience online, to help men choose the color that’s just right for them. With some customers in their target demographic sensitive around shopping for personal care products, Just For Men decided to build a state-of-the-art subscription service: with regular deliveries, their customers need never go gray again. To bring this commerce vision to life, they needed a flexible eCommerce platform. After careful consideration, Just For Men chose Magento Commerce.

"As consumers change the way they shop for products, we have to change with them. Magento gives us the flexibility to do so."

John Ryan

Director of eCommerce and Digital Marketing, Combe

A tailor-made subscription service.

In the spring of 2016, Just For Men and Magento Solution Partner, Visiture, got straight to work. They implemented an exclusive shade selector, developed in-house by Visiture, to help Just For Men’s customers choose the right hair color. They built a new webstore with auto-delivery, cart flyout, configurable products, enhanced reviews, customer order status checks, and eCommerce tagging, to create a more tailored experience, and streamlined checkout experience.

“Magento gave us the ability to customize our site, which has helped us to control our offering, and provide a consistent and tailored experience for our customers,” said John Ryan, Director of eCommerce and Digital Marketing at Combe. Meanwhile, Visiture revelled in the ability to develop their own modules and integrate with external systems using real-time API calls. They integrated with Just For Men’s CRM, Zaius, their accounting software, Avalara, and their ERP, Tag Containers, and Analytic Platforms.

But the critical component of the company’s new digital strategy was the subscription model. Visiture built a custom subscription module that allows users to choose from a number of different hair color options, with flexible delivery choices ranging from once a week to every 30, 60, 90 days, or whatever the customer needs. Users can also easily configure their upcoming order and manage all aspects of their subscription, without leaving the site. On the back-end, the subscription module utilizes a system of custom tables and jobs that build new orders based on the renewal date for each subscription. The code is completely custom and lives entirely within Magento and Combe’s dedicated server.

Phenomenal growth. Happy customers.

Visiture launched Just for Men’s new B2C site in October of 2016 after a six month implementation. For the first time, Just For Men customers were able to shop for their hair-coloring products direct from the brand. This collaborative effort between Just For Men’s internal creative team and Visiture’s UX team achieved the goal of a highly-tailored, mobile friendly customer experience. “Our eCommerce site wouldn’t be what it is without our partnership with Visiture,” said Ryan. “They built our custom subscription service that has drastically revolutionized our business.”

Just For Men’s state-of-the-art subscription service removes the hassle of buying products in-store, and is a massive hit with their customers: not only has user traffic risen by 70 percent YoY, but order subscription rates have increased a staggering 400 percent. With Magento Commerce, Just For Men boosted their online growth, and ensured that the brand is ready for the next 30 years of making men look and feel their best.

"We needed a platform and a development partner that would be there with us every step of the way. We found that in Magento and Visiture."